Caesar

by Jona Lendering
Caius Julius Caesar (July 13, 100 - March 15, 44 BCE), statesman,
general and author, famous for the conquest
of Gaul (modern France and Belgium) and his subsequent coup
d' etat.

Youth (100-82)

When Caius Julius Caesar
was born, the leading man in Rome was
Caius Marius, who had saved
the Roman Republic several years before by defeating two German tribes,
the Teutones (102) and the Cimbri (101). The connections between the Marius
and Julius families were close: Marius was married to a sister of Caesar's
father. So, Caesar belonged to a powerful family.

His contemporaries
called Marius a popularis. It is unclear what this label
means (for some speculations, see below), but modern
historians tend to believe that it means that Marius tried to reach his
political aims via the People's Assembly. The opposite group, the optimates,
played the political game in the senate.

When Caesar was
still an infant, Marius lost much of his earlier popularity, and eventually
left Rome to travel in Greece and Asia Minor, hoping for some new command.
However, Marius was still influential, and in 92, Caesar's father was elected
praetor
(a magistrate whose most important function was the administration of justice).
In 91, the former praetor served as a governor in Asia Minor; it
is likely, therefore, that the young Caesar was outside Italy when the
Social War started.

This war originated
in the fact that the Roman allies in Italy had never received a fair share
in the spoils of the Roman empire, which included in those days Andalusia,
southern Castile, Catalonia, the Provence, Italy, the Dalmatian coast,
Greece and Macedonia, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete and modern Tunisia. The
Italians had fought to conquer the Mediterranean world, but did not get
the benefits of it. In 91, they rebelled. Marius was appointed general
and had some success; more important, however, were the victories of Sulla,
a man who was considered to be one of the
optimates. By diplomatic
ways, Rome divided the rebels: Lucius Julius Caesar (an uncle) promised
Roman citizenship to those Italians who had remained faithful, and in 89
a similar law promised citizenship to those who gave up fighting.

Seizing the opportunity,
king Mithridates V of Pontus attacked Asia Minor. The inhabitants
of this province had welcomed their liberators, and had murdered many Italians
and Romans. It is unknown where Caesar's family was in those days: it is
certain that Caesar's father was no longer Asia's governor. The Romans
wanted revenge, and the Senate appointed Sulla as a general in this First
Mithridatic War. After his departure, Marius was given the same command
by the People's Assembly. Sulla marched on Rome (First Civil War),
Marius fled to Africa, and Sulla went to Asia Minor again, where he defeated
Mithridates. During Sulla's absence, Marius returned, massacred all his
enemies, had himself elected consul (86), but died a few days later.

From now on,
Caesar's life was in danger: after all, he was the son of Marius's sister.
His safety did not grow when his father died (85) and the victorious Sulla
returned from Asia (82). However, the young man had had a fine education
by one of Rome's most important professors, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, who
was also the teacher of the orator
Cicero. Caesar was married to
Cornelia and had a daughter, Julia.

After his return,
Sulla had himself appointed dictator. Originally, dictatorship was
an extraordinary magistracy, perhaps best translated as "strong man", and
"dictatorship" had nothing to do with tyranny. However, Sulla's exercise
of the office gave rise to our present meaning of the word: wishing to
exterminate the
populares, Sulla changed the constitution by curtailing
the rights of the People's Assembly. Many people were slain: Marius's ashes
were scattered in the Tiber. Since Caesar was only eighteen years old,
Sulla decided to be kind, and ordered Marius' nephew to divorce from his
wife, as a symbolic act of his loyalty to the new regime. Although the
alternative was banishment (or worse), Caesar refused. Sulla appreciated
the young man's dedication to his bride, pardoned him, and prophesied that
"in this young man there is more than one Marius".

Early career (81-59)

Between 81 and 79, Caesar
served in Asia Minor on the personal staff of Marcus Minucius Thermus,
who was praetor in Asia Minor. Caesar was sent on a diplomatic mission
to king Nicomedes of Bithynia and seems to have had a love affair
with this ruler; during the conquest of the island Lesbos, Caesar gained
a prize for bravery (corona civica); later, he was captured by pirates,
and paid the usual ransom, 25 talents (500 kg) of silver.

When Sulla died
(78), Caesar felt safe to return to Italy, where he started a career as
a criminal lawyer. This was a normal thing to do, and Caesar stayed far
from politics. In 75, he went to Rhodes for further education, and again
he was captured by pirates, who asked the usual tariff. Caesar demanded
this prize be doubled (after all, he was an aristocrat) and promised to
kill his captors. After the ransom was paid, Caesar manned some ships,
defeated the bandits and had them crucified. After this incident, he continued
his studies.

They were interrupted,
however, when Mithridates of Pontus attacked Asia Minor a second
time (74). On his own initiative and expenses, Caesar raised a small army
and defended some towns, giving the official Roman commander Lucullus
time to organize an army and attack Mithridates in Pontus. Being
a war hero by now, Caesar returned to Rome in 73. A career as a general
and a politician had started.

In 68, he was
elected quaestor and served in Andalusia. (A
quaestor
was an officer who was detached to a provincial governor and whose duties
were primarily financial.) Before Caesar's departure, Marius's widow died,
and he held a funeral speech in which he praised his aunt and her family.
This was a way of claiming Marius' inheritance. That Caesar had developed
political ambitions is shown by an incident in Spain: in Gades he saw a
statue of Alexander the Great, and remarked that he had as yet performed
no memorable act, whereas at his age -33 years old- Alexander had already
conquered the whole world.

After his return
from Spain, Caesar was elected
aedile (in 65) and responsible
for "bread and circuses". He organized great games, making sure that the
Roman mob would remember his name: in this way, as a true
popularis,
he would control their votes in the People's Assembly. This same year,
he was accused of complicity in a plot to murder the consuls, but he was
not sentenced. The leader of the plot, one Catilina was able to
continue his career as a social reformer.

Two years later,
Caesar managed to be elected pontifex maximus or high priest.
He had paid large bribes. In this capacity, he proposed a moderate line
against the followers of Catilina, who had made a second attempt to seize
power. This second conspiracy was discovered by the consul Cicero, who
had Catilina's followers executed at the instigation of
Cato the Younger,
a representant of the traditionalist wing of the
optimates. Caesar's
opposition to the death penalty again represents his `popular' policies,
and probably he knew more about the plot than he liked to show.

Nevertheless,
he was elected praetor, and the
optimates became nervous
for the first time, because Caesar was extremely popular with the masses.
This time, they managed to raise accusations against Caesar, who they said
was involved in a desecration of certain secret ceremonies. These ceremonies
of the so-called Good Goddess were celebrated exclusively by women in the
house of the pontifex maximus, but a man had been able to be present.
The optimates argued that the high priest must have been involved
too, and Caesar's only way to prevent larger troubles, was to divorce his
wife.

Caesar was bankrupt
by now. He had paid for the games of 65, the lobby for the pontificate
in 63 and had paid much money to get out of the Good Goddess affair.
Marcus
Licinius Crassus, the richest man in Rome, paid Caesar's debts (830
talents, 17,500 kg silver) and Caesar had himself elected governor of Andalusia.

Until now, Caesar's
behaviour had been more or less normal for a Roman senator with strong
ambitions. From now on, however, Caesar's acts were often criminal, and
Caesar's problem seems to have been that he had to possess an office or
an army command, just to make sure that he had an immunity against prosecution.

Caesar's Spanish
War gives a foretaste of the Gallic Wars. There was some unrest in
the province, and under the pretext of restoring order, Caesar captured
several towns, looted them, and made a lightning attack along the west-coast
(through modern Portugal) and plundered the silver mines of Gallicia. When
a town was under siege, and surrendered, it was nonetheless ravaged. As
a rich man, Caesar returned, being able to sponsor a lobby for both the
consulate and the right to enter the city with his army in an official
procession (triumphus). Of these two, the triumph would give
him most popularity, but the consulship was a necessity: he was likely
to be prosecuted as a war criminal and the only way to prevent a law suit
was an office. Having both was impossible, as Cato the Younger had announced
the day of the consular elections, and no account of Caesar's candidacy
could be taken unless he was a private citizen. Caesar was forced to forego
his triumph in order to avoid losing the necessary consulship.

Caesar's consulship (59)

However, Caesar's consulship
was secure, and in december 60 he was elected to the highest office in
the Roman Republic. His colleague was Bibulus, one of the
optimates.
Some of the measures Caesar and Bibulus took were the publication of the
proceedings of the Senate, a reorganization of the taxes, and a law against
extortion. However, the two consuls were not on speaking terms, and at
a certain moment Caesar had his partner driven from the Forum. Next day,
Bibulus complained in the Senate, but Caesar's armed bodyguard made sure
that no one dared to support the poor consul. Other acts were equally illegal:
when Cato protested to one of Caesar's proposals, Caesar had him dragged
from the Senate's building and taken off to prison.

Usually, the
senate (i.e., the optimates) assigned a province to each consul,
where they were supposed to fight wars. Since Caesar's opponents were afraid
of him, the senators took care that provinces of the smallest importance
would be assigned to the newly elected consul: they could not run the risk
of letting Caesar secure a province involving the command of an army.

59, Caesar counteracted
by forming the so-called
triumvirate, or, to use the more adequate
term that was coined by the historian Livy (59 BCE - 17 CE), a conspiracy
between the three leading citizens. The other two citizens implied
in the conspiracy were the rich banker Crassus and the generalissimo
Gnaeus Pompeius, better known as
Pompey.

Crassus had started
as a colonel in Sulla's army, and had been able to make lots of money under
his regime. In 72, as praetor, Crassus had suppressed the slave
revolt of
Spartacus. Later, he had been involved in the Catiline
conspiracies. Caesar had already paid back his debt to Crassus, but still
had some moral obligation to the man who had secured his profitable Spanish
command.

Pompey was Rome's
leading general. He had started his career in Sulla's army, had later suppressed
a rising of followers of Marius in Spain and had co-operated with Crassus
in finishing off Spartacus' revolt. Later, he had defeated the pirates,
and after 66 he was given Lucullus' command against Mithridates of Pontus.
Pompey had defeated the king of
Pontus decisively and had forced
him to commit suicide; after this, Pompey had annexed Syria and invaded
Palestine, where he had captured Jerusalem. His soldiers called him "Pompey
the Great", and rightly so: he had doubled Rome's annual income and added
vast territories to the empire. In 62, Pompey had returned, and was at
odds with the Senate because of its tardiness in ratifying his organization
of the East.

The triumvirate
gave something to all its members. In the first place, they decided that
no step should be taken in public affairs which did not suit any of the
three conspirators; together, they would run the Republic. The deal was
sealed by intermarriage: Pompey married Caesar's daughter Julia; Caesar
married Calpurnia, whose father
Piso had been a close friend
of Crassus. Caesar saw to the swift ratification of Pompey's oriental acts.
An agrarian law passed the Senate, distributing land among the urban poor
and Pompey's soldiers.

Most important
was a law on the provincial commands, which gave Caesar the provinces Cisalpine
Gaul (i.e., the plains along the river Po), Illyricum (the Dalmatian coast),
and Transalpine Gaul (the Provence) for the years 58-54. In these provinces,
there were four legions. (A legion was an army unit of some 5,000 soldiers.)
Protected by his office as a commander and by these troops, Caesar would
be safe against his enemies.

Early in 58,
Caesar left Rome; his father-in-law Piso, who was consul, took care
of his affairs in the capital.

Wars in Gaul (58-52)

Gaul as a whole consisted
of a multitude of states of different ethnic origin. In the Iron Age, their
different cultures had started to resemble each other, largely by processes
of trade and exchange. The Greeks and Romans called all these people Celts
or
Gauls. In the fourth century, Gallic warriors had settled along
the Po and had invaded Central Italy (capturing Rome in 387). Most people
in Italy were afraid of new Gaulish invasions.

In the second
century mass migrations from Germans had started, for reasons that are
unclear. Marius had defeated some of their tribes (the Teutones and the
Cimbri), but in Caesar's days it was probably not a gross exaggeration
to say that the states of Gaul would have to become Roman or would be overrun
by Germans, who would proceed to attack Italy. If the Romans were afraid
of the Gauls, they were terrified of the Germans. In Caesar's propaganda,
an invasion of Gaul was a preventive war. Maybe Caesar was not blind to
trade: the Rhone-Saone-Rhine- corridor was the most important trade route
in pre-industrial Europe and a taste for Roman luxuries had already started
in the Gaulish states along the Rhone and Saone. British tin was traditionally
transported along the rivers Garonne and Seine.

Caesar's military
base was the valley of the Rhone, which had been Roman from 123 onwards.
In the valley of the Saone, the Aedui were faithful allies. When
Caesar became governor of this region, the Helvetians (a nation
in modern Switzerland) had decided to invade the region along the Rhone
and Saone, and it was obvious to Caesar that if he was able to defeat these
roaming Germans, he could impress the Senate. Besides, a victory over the
Germans would place him on the same rank as his uncle Marius. This is exactly
what happened: after raising two extra legions, he defeated the Helvetians,
once when they were crossing the Saone and a second time in the neighbourhood
of the capital of the Aedui, Bibracte. After these victories, the Gauls
are said to have asked Caesar to help them pushing back Germans, who had
crossed the Rhine and settled in Alsace. Again, Caesar was victorious,
and winter quarters were built in the neighbourhood of the battle field,
in modern Besancon.

Caesar spent
his winter in Cisalpine Gaul, having an eye on the city of Rome and giving
orders to
Piso. Until now, the wars in Gaul had been successful,
but not special. During the winter of 58/57, Caesar must have conceived
larger plans, and rumours that the Belgians had decided to attack
the Roman invaders were a good excuse to conquer all states in Gaul. Again,
Caesar raised two legions, and together with the other troops, he surprised
the Belgian nation of the Remi, who lived in modern Reims. His presence
prevented the Remi from taking part in the Belgian attack on the Romans,
and as it turned out, the Remi even sided with Caesar. As a result, the
other Belgians decided to attack a Remian town that was situated on the
boards of the river Aisne. Caesar, however, defended the town, and then
stroke at the Belgian tribe of the Nervians, who lived along the
Somme. In a battle, they were annihilated: barely 500 of their army of
60,000 survived. Along the Sambre and the Meuse, the Romans inflicted comparable
losses upon the Aduatuci in two battles. During the same year, a
smaller Roman army had gone to the west of modern France, and demanded
subjection of the nations in Normandy and Brittany. After his Belgian campaign,
Caesar's army followed, and winter quarters were established along the
Loire. Meanwhile, in Rome, public thanksgiving lasting fifteen days were
decreed by the Senate: no one had been granted this honour before.

Now that all
Gaul had at least nominally submitted to Rome, Caesar spent the winter
in Illyricum, but when he had crossed the Alps, the Gauls from Brittany
rose against the Romans (56). Caesar ordered ships to be built, and spent
some time in Italy, where he met Pompey and Crassus in Lucca: the triumvirs
decided to continue their conspiracy against the Roman Republic and agreed
that Caesar's generalship in Gaul would be prolonged until 50, December
31. This was an extraordinary command, and Caesar's fellow-conspirators
demanded in return Caesar's support to be consuls in the next year, 55.
Caesar agreed, and having secured his position, he crossed the Alps and
in the summer a naval battle took place, in which the Bretons were defeated.
Caesar's colonels took charge of mopping up expeditions in Aquitaine and
Normandy.

Next year, Caesar
accomplished two feats that must have shaken his Italian audience with
excitement. First, Caesar's engineers bridged the Rhine, showing the Germans
that the Romans were invincible. Actually, the destruction of German towns
was little short of terrorism. Having impressed the Germans, the Gauls,
and the Senate, Caesar turned to the west, where a large fleet was ready
to carry Caesar's armies to Britain, where a short campaign took place.
Even though the Britons were backward and still retained the primitive
social system of chiefdoms (i.e., there were no states), the senate was
duly impressed by the general who had reached the edges of the earth. The
consuls in Rome, Crassus and Pompey, were compelled to decree a thanksgiving
of twenty days.

In 54, Caesar
invaded Britain again. He defeated the chief of the Britons,
Cassivellaunus,
in a battle near modern London and crossed the Thames. In Essex, some scientific
experiments were carried out: from measurements with a water clock, Caesar's
explorators learned that the nights in Britain were shorter than on the
continent. After this expedition, winter quarters were built among the
Belgians.

In the winter
of 54-53, Caesar was faced with a serious crisis, as the winter camps were
built too far from each other. Two legions were annihilated by a rising,
led by Ambiorix. Though Caesar remained in control, it was obvious
that Gaul was anything but conquered. Another cloud appeared on the horizon:
from Rome came the message that Julia had died. As her father Caesar will
have mourned his daughter, but as a politician he must have understood
that the friendship with Pompey was no longer certain.

When the uneasy
winter was over, Caesar must have decided to teach the Belgians a lesson
for once and for all. The Nervians, who had already been decimated, were
victims of naked aggression, after which the Menapii in the marshlands
along the Rhine experienced the same horrors. (When this genocide became
known in Rome, Cato exclaimed that Caesar ought to be handed over to the
Germans.) A second Rhine crossing followed, and German tribes were forced
to go with the current to the empty country of the Menapii (later, these
migrants were known as Batavians). After these atrocities, winter
quarters were built between the Seine and the Loire.

52 saw an even
more serious rising than that of the winter of 54/53. For the first time,
almost all nations in Gaul united under one commander,
Vercingetorix.
Only the Belgians, still lamenting the disaster of the year before, remained
aloof. Caesar was forced to defend himself: he had to recall his armies
from the north, and meanwhile tried to hold the south. Vercingetorix decided
to drive away the Romans by cutting them off from forage and supplies:
the Gauls therefore destroyed their towns, and stored everything in a few
impregnable towns. Their army would attack the Romans when they laid siege
to these strongholds. This tactic would force the Romans back from Gaul
into the Provence. However, the Romans managed to take Bourges, killing
39,000 Gauls. The Gauls remained optimistic, and even the Aedui, Caesar's
allies, rebelled. Soon after their insurgence, the Romans failed to take
Gergovia.
Meanwhile, the legions from Belgium on their way to the south found their
ways barred by the Gauls, but in Paris, they crossed the Seine and three
days later they contacted Caesar's defeated army. Having his armies united,
Caesar was able to block Vercingetorix in a formidable fortress called
Alesia. This site was too high to be stormed, so Caesar had to starve
his enemies, who had lots of food.

The Romans decided
that they could wait, and built enormous fortifications (the remains of
which have survived). First, they build one line to keep in 80,000 Gauls;
then, a second line to defend the Romans against 240,000 warriors of the
Gaulish rescue force, that was besieging the besiegers. Terrible things
happened: the Gauls sent away their wives and children, and the Romans
refused to let them pass their lines. They were starved to death between
the lines. In the end, Roman fortifications proved superior to Gaulish
numbers, and Vercingetorix surrendered.

The whole of
Gaul was now conquered. Three million people had been living in Gaul before
Caesar arrived in 58; one million had been killed and one million had been
sold as slaves when he left in 50. Caesar himself wrote in his Commentaries
on the War in Gaul that peace had been brought to the whole of Gaul.
It is not hard to see that this was the peace of a graveyard.

Civil wars (51-45)

When Caesar was in Gaul
and organized the conquered territories, Pompey and Crassus tried to enlarge
their power too. Pompey was successful: in 52, he was elected "consul without
colleague", and he yielded dictatorial authority. Crassus, however, was
unfortunate: after his consulship, he became governor of Syria with special
prerogatives, and was defeated by the
Parthians, who lived in modern
Iraq. They murdered the Roman general by giving him what he had desired
most, gold: the precious metal was liquified and poured into his mouth.

After Crassus's
death, Pompey and Caesar remained, and the Senate feared a civil war, from
which a king would arise. An overwhelming majority in the Senate (400 against
22) wished both dynasts to lay down their extraordinary commands before
the consular elections in December 50. (The question if this was lawful
remains unanswered: in 52, the People's Assembly had allowed Caesar to
run for consul without being present.) After some deliberations, Pompey
obeyed the Senate.

He was in a better
position than Caesar. If the latter obeyed, he was no longer immune to
prosecution. Cato had charged him with war crimes in Germany, and many
people remembered Caesar's first consulship and the Spanish War. If Caesar
refused to obey, he would be declared an enemy of the state: the Senate
would be forced to appoint a commander with plenary powers, and it was
not hard to see who this general would be.

In 49, on January
7, the Senate demanded Caesar to hand over his ten well-trained legions
to a new governor. Caesar heard the news in Ravenna, and knew that he had
to make a choice between prosecution and rebellion: preferring the dignity
of war over the humiliation of a process, Caesar chose to rebel, quoting
his favourite poet Menander, "the die is cast". On January 10, his army
advanced to Rimini, where Caesar could control the passes across the Apennines:
in doing so, he crossed the river Rubico, thereby invading Italy
and provoking the Second Civil War. Caesar's perspectives did not
look great: nine of his legions were in Gaul.

As it turned
out, the Senate had made a disastrous mistake. It had believed that the
issue was between a rebel and the legitimate rulers, and had expected that
the towns of Italy would send troops in defence of the authority of the
Senate and the Roman People's liberties. But Italy was sceptical about
its champions, and showed no enthusiasm to defend the constitution. For
Caesar's soldiers, on the other hand, everything depended on this one campaign:
if they failed, they would never receive their pension. Unable to raise
armies, the Senate was helpless. Two weeks after the start of the Civil
War, Caesar was master of Italy and had hunted his enemies to the heel
of Italy, from where Pompey and many senators fled to Greece (March 17).

Caesar did not
waste his time. The situation was clear: the Senate had seven legions in
Spain without commander, Pompey was in Greece without army. Caesar decided
to attack the army first. When he entered Rome, Caesar pardoned instead
of massacred his enemies and created a new Senate, which would authorize
Caesar's acts. Before it had assembled, Caesar was already on his way to
Spain, in the meanwhile proposing a law to give Roman citizenship to the
inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul. After picking up his legions in the neighbourhood
of Marseilles, Caesar crossed the Rhone and the Pyrenees, and defeated
the Spanish army in the Battle of Ilerda, close to modern Barcelona.
Again, Caesar showed clemency, sparing the commanders and disbanding the
defeated legions. He rushed to Corduba, where two legions (commanded by
Varro) submitted to Caesar. After his return, Caesar was made dictator:
he had been out of Rome for three months.

Meanwhile, Pompey
was in Greece, and by drawing upon the resources of the eastern provinces
and client kings, he managed to raise an army of eight legions and a fleet
of 300 ships, commanded by Bibulus. Now he was able to return to Italy.
This was precisely what Caesar feared, and in despite the risk of winter
navigation, he got seven legions across the Adriatic. Pompey was not surprised
and blocked Caesar in
Dyrrhachium (modern D?rres). Caesar was in
an awkward position, but in March 48 at last
Marc Antony managed
to reinforce Caesar with four legions. The united army managed to break
through Pompey's lines, crossed the Pindos-mountains and defeated the pursuing
Roman army near
Pharsalus (August 9). Almost 6,000 soldiers were
killed, and when Caesar surveyed the battle field and saw the bodies of
the dead senators, he said: "Well, they would have it thus."

Pompey survived
the Battle of Pharsalus, and went to Egypt, followed by Caesar. When Caesar
arrived, he learned that Pompey had been executed by soldiers of the ten
year old king
Ptolemy XIII, who hoped to gain Caesar's support in
his quarrel with his older sister
Cleopatra VII. It turned out differently:
Caesar was furious that he was not given the chance to pardon Pompey. When
Caesar met Cleopatra, he was captivated by the girl's charms and chose
her side in the Alexandrine War: Caesar's soldiers arrived in the
spring of 47 and defeated Ptolemy. The boy's body was found in the Nile.

Having pacified
Egypt, Caesar and Cleopatra spent two months on a honeymoon cruise on the
Nile. Then Caesar hurried off to Asia Minor, where
Pharnaces, the
son of Mithridates, had challenged Roman authority. He was defeated in
a rapid campaign at
Zela ("I came, I saw, I conquered"). Having
defeated Pompey and having calmed Egypt and Asia, in the course of the
summer (47) the dictator was free to return to Rome.

Domestic policy (47-44)

There were insurrections:
in the spring of 46, Caesar defeated the Republicans at
Thapsus
in Africa. Cato the Younger committed suicide, because he did not want
Caesar to pardon him. Being on the spot, Caesar annexed some of the territories
of the Numidian king Juba. The wars seemed over, and Caesar celebrated
four triumphs: he had defeated Vercingetorix, Ptolemy, Pharnaces, and Juba.
In 45, however, Caesar had to suppress a final revolt in Spain, led by
a son of Pompey. In the battle of
Munda, Caesar was victorious for
the last time.

At home, he showed
himself a restless reformer. The Roman mob had received free corn doles:
Caesar reduced the number of recipients from 322,000 to 150,000. The poor
were offered a new life overseas, where he ordered cities like Carthage
and Corinth to be rebuilt and founded new towns, such as Arles and Seville.
The soldiers of the civil wars also received small farms; his own soldiers
he paid an additional silver talent (21 kg or the equivalent of 26 year's
pay). In Asia Minor and Sicily, he introduced a new system of taxation,
which protected the subjects from extortion.

Debts were a
serious problem, because interest had been sky-high during the Civil War.
Caesar disappointed radical reformers (like Marcus Caelius Rufus)
who had expected a total cancellation. Caesar decreed, however, that the
debtors should satisfy their creditors according to a valuation of their
possessions at the price which they had paid for them before the war, deducting
whatever interest already had been paid. This arrangement wiped out about
a fourth part of the debts.

Many public works
were carried out in Italy. Most famous is the
Forum of Caesar, a
kind of shopping complex in the commercial centre of Rome. On the old forum,
the political heart of the empire, he rebuilt the speaker's platform, the
court house, and the Senate's building. (While the Senate's building was
under construction, the Senate gathered in the Theatre of Pompey, which
was outside the city, where Caesar's army could control its meetings.)
Varro, the commander of Pompey's army in Corduba, was appointed head of
a state library; to ensure that Rome would be a centre of learning, Caesar
conferred privileges to all teachers of the liberal arts.

As a legislator,
Caesar prepared standard regulations for the municipal constitutions and
proposed a law against extravagance. The Jews -who had helped him in the
Alexandrine War- were protected. He even planned a codification of all
existent Civil Law (a project not executed before 438 CE). Most remarkable
is the reorganization of the calendar: the Republican year had counted
355 days, the deficiency made up by randomly adding an extra month. With
the advice of Cleopatra's astrologer, Caesar added four extra months to
the year 46, decreeing that from January 1, 45 our calendar (365.25 days)
was to be used.

The empire had
been run by a government that had consisted of 600 senators (who served
as judges), several magistrates, several governors, and their personal
staff. Caesar recognized the need to enlarge the government. He enlarged
the number of senators from 600 to 900, rose the
praetores from
eight to sixteen, the aediles from four to six, and the
quaestores
from twenty to forty. The last measure granted some justice in provincial
taxation, but did not establish a serious professional bureaucracy as yet.

Caesar's most
important policy was his lavish granting of citizenship: those who were
subjected by the Romans could receive a set of extra civil rights and a
small share in the benefits of empire. During the Social War, the Italian
allies had received this Roman Citizenship from Caesar's uncle; Caesar
extended the privilege first to the Gauls along the Po, and -later- to
some Gauls that he had subdued. The inhabitants of many individual towns
received the privilege too. To the dismay of the old aristocracy, Caesar
even started to recruit new senators from outside Italy.

Constitutional problems

Caesar's most important
problem, however, was that he was too powerful: the Roman Republic was
an oligarchy in which the powers were shared among the senators. Even though
the Senate was defeated, oligarchic sentiments were strong, and Caesar
had to find a way to make his rule tolerable. His clemency was important,
but nothing more than a precondition to this.

It is possible
that Caesar wanted to evade the question by leaving Rome and starting a
new military campaign. In the spring of 44, an expeditionary force was
on its way to the east, where Crassus's death had to be avenged. Its temporary
commander was the son of Caesar's niece Atia, the young Caius Octavius.
Caesar was to follow his legions and planned to attack the Parthians. Of
course, success in the east would not have solved the problem.

Another way was
to behave himself as a king, without actually using this title. The only
kings the Romans knew, were the oriental kings, and therefore Caesar used
their symbols to show his power. His statue was placed among those of the
legendary Roman kings, he was allowed to wear a purple robe, he was given
the surname Father of the Country, sat on a raised couch in the theatre
and on a golden throne in the Senate, coins showed his portrait, and a
temple was erected to Caesar's Clemency: its first priest was Marc Antony.
When people wanted to approach him, he received them without rising. On
the other hand, he refused to wear a crown, but was satisfied with a laurel
wreath to cover his bald head.

Roman constitutional
law allowed one way to exercise personal rule: the dictatorship. Caesar
was made dictator after his return from Ilerda; in October 48 he was again
appointed, in 46 he became dictator for ten years and in 44 for life. This
was, however, not a solution, since the dictatorship had already been misused
by Sulla, and even though it was a legal construction, it smelled like
blood. A permanent consulship seemed to be a better response to the situation,
and indeed, Caesar had himself elected consul in 48, 46, 45 and 44 (with
Marc Antony). He also experimented with Pompey's innovation, the consulship
without colleague (45). Again, this didn't work: although repeated consulships
were not unconstitutional, occupying a magistrature permanently made it
impossible for the aristocrats to show their importance. And indeed, many
people's feelings were hurt. In the last weeks before his death, Caesar
seems to have found a solution: he accepted the powers of several
magistratures without occupying the magistratures themselves. In
this way, Caesar could control the government without interfering with
the careers of the nobles. The settlement by the emperor Augustus in 27
BCE shows that this solution could have been acceptable.

However, many
Roman senators refused to resign themselves to a controlled oligarchy.
More than sixty joined the conspiracy led by Caius Cassius and Marcus Brutus.
They decided to kill the dictator when the Senate would meet on March 15.

On this day,
Caesar was ill, and he decided to stay at home with his wife Calpurnia,
who was discomforted because of some nightmares. Brutus' brother
Decimus
Brutus, however, visited the couple and implored Caesar not to disappoint
the waiting senators. On his way to Pompey's theatre, several people handed
over requests: Caesar held them in his left hand, intending to read them
after the meeting. Accordingly he did not read a notice revealing the plot.

As he sat down
on his raised couch and had received the senators who had gathered about
him to pay their respects, Lucius Tillius Cimber came forward to make a
request. He told Caesar that his brother was in jail and when Caesar started
to reply that clemency was his usual policy, Tillius unexpectedly caught
Caesar's toga.

"Be careful,
there's no need to use force!", Caesar grumbled and asked his guard to
take away the man. However, before the guard could interfere, another senator,
Casca, stabbed the dictator just below the throat. Then, his victim understood
what was happening, and he caught Casca's arm and run through it with the
only weapon he could find, his pen. As Caesar tried to leap on his feet,
he was kicked and stopped by another wound. When Caesar saw that he was
surrounded by men with daggers, he knew he would not survive. He wrapped
his head in his robe and covered the lower part of his body with a part
of his toga, and was stabbed with twenty three wounds, not uttering a word.

All the conspirators
made off, and Caesar lay lifeless at the feet of a statue of Pompey. For
hours, nobody dared to come close, until three common slaves put his corpse
on a litter and carried him home, with one arm hanging down.

Caesar's inheritance (44-27)

The conspirators wanted
to restore the Republic, but instead, another round of horrors followed.
There were troops; there were politicians who aspired to Caesar's autocratic
power; and they were prepared to use the troops.

Marc Antony,
the consul, was now the official head of the state, and his first act was
the confiscation of Caesar's papers and treasury. Then, he secured the
co-operation of the commander of Caesar's troops outside Rome, Lepidus.
Having the men and the money, he could negotiate from strength, and dictated
the murderers a compromise: they were to receive amnesty, while Caesar's
acts were to be respected, and he would be worshipped as a god. At the
end of the day, Marc Antony was in charge of the city.

That very day,
Piso opened the testament of his son-in-law. It contained precisely
the material that Marc Antony needed: Caesar left his gardens as a park
to the city of Rome, and gave every inhabitant a large amount of money.
Several days later, Caesar's corpse was burned on the forum. The Roman
mob saw the blood-stained cloak, and heard of the money that was to be
distributed among them. Then, Marc Antony delivered the funeral oration,
in which he inflamed their emotions: shortly after the assault, Caesar's
murderers had to escape from the city that they had wished to liberate.

There was one
minor cloud on Marc Antony's horizon: Caesar had left three quarters of
his estate to his great-nephew Octavius, who was with the army in the east.
Most important, Caesar had adopted him as a son, which meant that the eighteen
years old Octavius had to change his name and would from now on be called
Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, i.e. Caesar from the Octavius family.
The boy decided to return to Italy, and demanded his share, which Antony
had already confiscated. At first, nobody seemed to notice the boy, except
for Caesar's veterans, but Caesar Octavianus couldn't pay them. However,
the soldiers were enthusiast and loved the new Caesar.

By accident,
Decimus Brutus was governor of Cisalpine Gaul, and Marc Antony had reason
to fear his troops. Therefore, he left Rome to drive away Decimus Brutus.
While Marc Antony and Decimus Brutus were fighting at Modena, the
Senate convened, and Cicero held several speeches in which he tried to
incriminate Marc Antony, pointing out that the consul would return with
an army. This, he argued, was the moment to restore the Republic, and Caesar
Octavianus might be used ("we must praise him, give him a command and then
put him away"). The Senate agreed, and even though Caesar Octavianus was
now nineteen, they gave him a military command. He didn't disappoint the
Senate: in two battles, he defeated Marc Antony, who fled with difficulty
across the Alps, where he managed to gain the support of all troops in
Spain in Gaul. Then, Caesar Octavianus showed that actually, he had used
Cicero: he marched on Rome and demanded the consulship. Again, the Senate
had to yield to a revolutionary leader with an army.

In control of
the city, Caesar Octavianus declared Marc Antony's compromise to be illegal
and outlawed the murderers of his father. Then, unexpectedly, he decided
to sign peace with Marc Antony: he had learned that it was impossible to
defeat the man who controlled Spain and Gaul, but together they could destroy
the Republic, if they managed to defeat Caesar's murderers, who possessed
some troops in the east. In 42, Brutus and Cassius were defeated at
Philippi,
on the northern shore of the Aegean Sea.

Marc Antony,
Caesar Octavianus and Lepidus formed the
Second Triumvirate and
divided the Mediterranean: Marc Antony received the east, Lepidus Africa
and the rest was to be Caesar Octavianus's. Unlike the first triumvirate,
which was a private contract, this was an official magistracy, and the
People's Assembly and the Senate ratified a bill giving these three men
dictatorial powers. Cicero was against this bill, but a murderer took care
of him. Formally, the Republic had ended.

Caesar Octavianus
was a brave man; he had appreciated political realities; and he was a skilled
diplomat. But his successes would not have been this dazzling if his name
had not been Caius Julius Caesar, and if he had not been able to claim
to be the son of a god.

More successes
were to come: in his propaganda, he was able to present the situation as
a choice between liberty and stable government. Lepidus was simply appointed
pontifex maximus, and will probably have been glad that he managed
to survive. Marc Antony fell in love with Cleopatra, and launched a disastrous
expedition against the Parthians. It was easy for Caesar Octavianus to
present Marc Antony's acts as sacrificing Roman interests to an oriental
mistress. In 31, Julis Caesar's heir defeated Marc Antony in a naval engagement
off the Greek coast, the Battle of Actium.

Now, it was Caesar
Octavianus's turn to make monarchy acceptable, and he found the way that
Julius Caesar had merely guessed: in 27, he laid down his triumviral powers,
saying that he was content with the honour of restoring the Republic. He
would be content with the name
Augustus ("the exalted one"). In
fact, Caesar Augustus accepted the powers of magistratures (like consulship)
without occupying the magistratures themselves. In this way, he managed
to control the government behind a republican facade, backed by strong
armies.

Caesar Augustus
turned out to be the true heir of his divine father: many of Julius Caesar's
plans were now implemented. The most important of these was the granting
of citizenship to people who did not live in Italy. In the first century
BCE the Roman Republic changed into a Mediterranean empire, and Julius
Caesar speeded up this process; Caesar Augustus was the executor of this
will.

Evaluation

Julius Caesar stimulated
the transition of the Roman Republic into a Mediterranean empire, bringing
the fruits of empire (relative peace and modest prosperity) to some sixty
million people. This conclusion brings us to the final question: was Caesar
responsible for this reformation? The conquest of Gaul, the war against
Pompey and the autocracy of Caesar are events that move so swift and sure
as to appear as if Caesar had a deliberate plan to start a monarchy as
an answer to all the world's problems.

Some historians
have chosen this perspective, and the most eloquent of these historians
was the German Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), in his
Roemische
Geschichte.

Mommsen was one
of the founders of the liberal Deutsche Fortschrittspartei
(German Progressive Party) and cultivated a bottomless hatred for the conservative
Prussian nobility, and his view of the fall of the Roman Republic was coloured
by his deep-rooted disillusionment with German liberal politics. The populares
were, in Mommsen's view, a political party like his own people's party;
as a corollary, the
optimates represented the Roman conservatives,
who showed a remarkable resemblance to the Prussian nobles. Caesar was,
for Mommsen, the incarnation of the "heroic legislator" (an idea of the
French political philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau): Caesar had
swept away the pieces of a corrupt nobility and had created an empire that
served the needs of its inhabitants. In its constitution monarchy and democracy
were balanced - something Mommsen would have appreciated in his own country.

Mommsen wrote
that Caesar's

aim was the
highest which a man is allowed to propose himself - the political, military,
intellectual, and moral regeneration of his own deeply decayed nation .
. . The hard school of thirty years' experience changed his views as to
the means by which this aim was to be reached; his aim itself remained
the same in the times of his hopeless humiliation and of his unlimited
plenitude of power, in the times when as demagogue and conspirator he stole
towards it by paths of darkness, and in those when, as joint possessor
of the supreme power and then as monarch, he worked at his task in the
full light of day before the eyes of the world. . . . According to his
original plan he had purposed to reach his object . . . without force of
arms, and throughout eighteen years he had as leader of the people's party
moved exclusively amid political plans and intrigues - until, reluctantly
convinced of the necessity for a military support, he, when already forty
years of age, put himself at the head of an army.

A century later, the judgment
pronounced in this florid prose is dated. No historian will agree that
Caesar was the leader of a people's party that can be compared to Mommsen's
liberal
Fortschrittspartei. But it cannot be denied that many of
Caesar's measures indeed seemed to protect the ordinary people against
the selfish policy of the nobles: this can easily be illustrated by pointing
at Caesar's measures on taxation and citizenship. It is, however, impossible
to establish if the improvement of the position of the people was Caesar's
aim or just a way to establish a strong base for a personal regime.

The latter is
the opinion of great historians like Eduard Meyer (1855-1930) and J‚r“me
Carcopino, who maintained in their Caesars Monarchie und das Pinzipat
des Pompejus (1919) and Histoire Romaine (vol. 2, 1936) that
since his youth, Caesar's sole aim was the establishment of an oriental
monarchy in Rome.

When these books
appeared, the German historian Matthias Gelzer had already shown that perhaps
it was wrong to focus on Caesar's policy: men make history, but not in
the circumstances of their choosing, and Caesar was perhaps nothing but
an exponent of a larger process. Gelzer thought that it was wrong to regard
men -even powerful men like Caesar- as initiators of social changes: these
had to have deeper causes. In his book on the nobility of the Roman Republic
(Die Nobilit„t der R”mischen Republik, 1912), Gelzer pointed out
that the fall of the Republic was not just the establishment of a monarchy
by one man (consciously striving at it or not), but a social revolution
in which the old, Roman aristocracy was replaced by a new oligarchy that
enroled its members from all parts of Italy and even the provinces. For
this process, Gelzer coined the term R”mische Revolution.

This title was
borrowed by Oxford professor Ronald Syme (1903-1989), who in the
Anglo-Saxon world is considered to be one of the greatest historians of
his age. His book on the
The Roman Revolution appeared on the very
day that the Second World War broke out, and this is significant for its
contents: being confronted with tyrants like Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini,
Syme was unable to share Mommsen's enthusiasm for one-person rule. As his
title shows, Syme agreed with Gelzer's thesis that Caesar was an exponent
of a larger process, in which the old aristocracy was replaced by a larger
nobility.

Gelzer, however,
had created a new problem: if we are to regard Caesar's acts as part of
a larger process, we must explain how this process came into being. In
spite of his declared ignorance of sociology, Syme borrowed the concept
of
competitive elitism from Mommsen's brilliant pupil Max Weber
(1864-1920). Competitive elitism was Weber's concept of democracy: there
were several factions, who were contending with each other to gain power,
and (combinations of) these factions balanced each other. The people that
mattered were the elite of the factions, and it has been argued that Weber
in fact vindicated oligarchy.

Syme was of the opinion
that the Late Roman Republic had indeed several competing elites: he pointed
at the Licinius family, who grouped around Lucullus and Crassus; the kinsmen
of Cato; the Julius and Marius families; the relatives of Pompey; and of
course the Octavii. In his reconstruction of the events, the optimates
and
populares were not political parties (as Mommsen had thought):
these words signified two approaches to legitimacy.
Optimates thought
that a decision was legitimate when it was made in the Senate, the
populares
tried to reach their aims in the People's Assembly. The family-factions
that Syme postulated were free to use both ways, and in fact did use both
ways. The Julian faction had a tendency to have its policy validated in
the People's Assembly, but in 49 Caesar was anxious to receive ratification
in the Senate; on the other hand, Cato's faction used
optimate ways,
but Cato was not above increasing the number of recipients of the corn
dole.

Caesar, in Syme's
opinion, was a Roman aristocrat who was able to surpass his fellow aristocrats
because he found support outside Italy. He did not have a "policy", he
simply wanted to be the first among his equals. Caesar's lavish distribution
of citizenship was an important step in this revolution, which Caesar of
course did not control.

Syme writes:

"They would
have it thus," said Caesar as he gazed upon the Roman dead at Pharsalus,
half in patriot grief for the havoc of civil war, half in impatience and
resentment. They had cheated Caesar of the true glory of a Roman aristocrat
- to contend with his peers for primacy, not to destroy them. His enemies
had the laugh of him in death. Even Pharsalus was not the end. His former
ally, the great Pompeius, glorious from victories in all quarters of the
world, lay unburied on an Egyptian beach, slain by a renegade Roman, the
hireling of a foreign king. Dead, too, and killed by Romans, were Caesar's
rivals and enemies, many illustrious consulars. . . . Cato chose to fall
by his own hand rather than witness the domination of Caesar and the destruction
of the Free State.

That was the
nemesis of ambition and glory, to be thwarted in the end. After such wreckage,
the task of rebuilding confronted him, stern and thankless. Without the
sincere and patriotic co- operation of the governing class, the attempt
would be all in vain, the mere creation of arbitrary power, doomed to perish
in violence . . . Under these unfavourable auspices, . . . Caesar established
his Dictatorship. . . . . In the short time at his disposal he can hardly
have made plans for a long future or laid the foundation of a consistent
government. Whatever it might be, it would owe more to the needs of the
moment than to alien or theoretical models.

At the moment, most historians
will agree with Syme and disagree with Mommsen. On the other hand, it can
be argued that Syme's "factions" resemble the cliques that run a university,
like Oxford. Syme's belief in family loyalty seems not very realistic and
has already been challenged. Future generations of historians will certainly
find new ways to evaluate Caesar.

Caesar's writings

Writing in the second
century CE, the Roman author Suetonius still knew many of Caesar's publications,
such as a book On analogy and a collection of speeches In reply
to Cato. A poem The voyage described Caesar's journey from Rome
to Spain, when he was governor of Andalusia. These works are now unknown.
In Suetonius' days, other publications were already lost: a tragedy Oedipus,
a collection of apophtegms and a poem or speech In praise of Hercules.

The only publications
that can still be read, are his fascinating
C ommentaries on the War
in Gaul (De
bello Gallico)
and his Commentaries on the Civil War. The
first text was written in Gaul, and contains seven books, each covering
a single year from 58 to 52. An eighth book carries the story to the outbreak
of the Civil War, but is written by one Hirtius (who is perhaps also the
author of The Spanish War). In these books, Caesar is his own herald:
in a simple and compressed style, he shows himself involuntarily fighting
necessary wars.

Sources

Most entertaining is the
biography by Suetonius, which is the first of the Lives of the
twelve Caesars. The biographer was in charge of the imperial archives
under the emperor Hadrian (who ruled 117-138): in this capacity, Suetonius
had access to probably the best possible information. He uses it critically:
for example, about Caesar's death circulated a story that he had expected
the assault, but was shocked to discover that Brutus was one of the conspirators,
and that his last words were "You too, my son?". Suetonius makes clear
that he has some doubts about this anecdote.

Describing someone's
life is a meaningless thing to do, unless there is some moral to be learned.
Suetonius' moral is clear: if a man has the total freedom and the absolute
power of a Roman emperor, he must be strong indeed if he wants to remain
honest. To show this, he is fond of stories about cruelty and sexual deviations.
Of course, this makes him one of the most interesting authors of antiquity,
but sometimes he seems to portray
his emperors a nuance too black.

Another moralist
is the Greek author Plutarch, who was a few years younger than Suetonius
and covered more or less the same ground. His biography
is meant as a counterpart to a Life of Alexander the Great: consequently,
the moral is totally different, namely that Greeks and Romans have much
more in common than they want to admit.

These two biographies
give us the outline of Caesar's life, a mere skeleton. It should be given
flesh with other information, for which Caesar's own writings are very
important.

The correspondence
of Cicero cannot be dismissed: to a large extent, his Letters to Atticus
is private correspondence and gives us first-rate information about the
political life in Rome in Caesar's days. As these letters were rediscovered
during the reign of Caesar's descendant Nero (who ruled 54-68 CE), several
unbecoming letters about Caesar were not published. The same selection
was made in the collections of Cicero's Letters to Friends and Letters
to Brutus. Cicero's speeches are very informative, especially
On
the provinces for the consuls, For
Marcellus, For Ligarius and the Philippic speeches against
Marc Antony. A very amusing sketch of public morals in Caesar's
days is Cicero's speech
For Marcus Caelius Rufus.

On Caesar's behaviour
in 63, our most important source is The
Catiline Conspiracy by Caesar's partisan Sallustius. Perhaps
he is also the author of a Letter to Caesar, in which the author
suggests some reforms.

The books on
Caesar by the historian Livy have not survived, but excerpts are
still extant. It is possible to say that Plutarch must have used this text
when he wrote his biographies: his Life of Caesar has already been
mentioned, but biographies of Brutus,
Cato
the Younger,
Cicero,
Crassus,
Marc
Antony and
Pompey
are most informative too. In the third century, the historian Cassius
Dio based his description of the fall of the Roman Republic (books
36-44 of his History) on Livy. For the struggle over Caesar's inheritance,
he is the most important source.